4 ms·

I would love for these "voting IDs are necessary" people to actually spell out the 'attack' that they envision without voter IDs. You have to be registered to

I would love for these "voting IDs are necessary" people to actually spell out the 'attack' that they envision without voter IDs. You have to be registered to vote in the US, so the thought is that they could show up to a voting precinct and pretend to be someone else and vote since you won't have an ID checked? It's not like the people there would let you do that more than once.. and they cross off people who have already voted, so you could only fraudulently vote for people who won't ever show up.. and you would have to drive to other precincts and know the names of people registered to vote but who won't vote that day for it to scale at all.. Just completely nonsensical.

sokoloff 6y ago
It seems you only have to get to the polls before the registered voter to carry out an effective attack against that vote. If someone gets to the polls before me and votes under my name, what happens when the real me shows up? They surely can’t go fish “the other me’s” ballot out of the box, because it’s not tied to my name. Where I vote, it would be trivial to do this, as the rolls of voters are openly published and it’s often the case that the poll worker asks you to help find your name and it’s clear which names have been ticked off. Couple that with week-plus early voting and it would be easy to attack an individual vote. Now, I don’t think it’s likely to affect elections because it’s extremely rare for a small number of votes to decide anything but pretending that we have a secure system without ID is fanciful IMO. To be clear, I’m fine with the current setup and appreciate/support the week-plus of early voting.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > what happens when the real me shows up? What happens is that it becomes immediately obvious that voter fraud has happened, and a criminal investigation begins before the results of the election can be certified. In addition to being basically impossible to scale up to an effective volume, this form of election fraud is also extremely difficult to pull off without getting caught. So it's really more of a (hypothetical) public nuisance leading to election do-overs, than an effective way to subvert the outcome of an election.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Exactly, and each one of the fraudulent votes would consist of a separate felony. So you'd have to wrangle enough people into your conspiracy and convince them all to commit several felonies without having any idea how close the election was going to be. It's not a coincidence that it's an extremely effective way to target "specific" voters in order to depress turnout either.
redis_mlc 6y ago
For those not from the US ... How voter disenfranchisement works is like this. One party (usually the Republicans) looks at a map of areas they're losing in. Then they send a bunch of canvassers over to find out who moved without changing their address, who was sent to jail, technicalities, etc. and request those names be removed from the voter registration list. There's no effort to update the list, it's all removals. And the canvassers don't disclose their actual party or motivation for showing up at your house.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  It seems entirely "fair play" (and even desirable) to me to exclude from the voting rolls anyone who is not actually eligible to vote per the election rules. While I'd prefer the election commission do this investigative work to keep the lists clean, I'm fine with anyone who goes and does it. (I am unaffiliated with either major party.) Is there a genuine public interest served by not performing this data cleansing and allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots?
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    That's only ever fair if you have instant registration with provisional ballots - many jurisdictions combine these attacks on the vote with long lead times for voter registration so you go to the polls to find out you aren't registered and are left with no recourse. Of course they use dirty lists to begin with that remove thousands of properly registered voters, which I'm sure is accidental and not at all hostile to democracy.[1] I'm so tired of groups actively suppressing vote and people insisting it's all well and good since hypothetically it's preventing some type of fraud that has never been shown to happen in practice. When Stephanie Hofeller published her father's files, all pretense was dropped. Just naked, racist, partisan bullshit.[2] [1] https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/ https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strategists-daughter-makes-files-public-that-republicans-wanted-sea https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strate...
adrianmonk 6y ago
First I want to say voter ID laws are in practice intended to disenfranchise voters. Which makes them unethical. I have also never seen any evidence that it's an actual problem on any significant scale. But, in theory, I think the threat model is there. Here in Texas, you can get a list of everyone who is registered to vote. Most states make these lists available; in Texas, it's available to anyone. So that takes care of one of the steps of identity theft, which this is a form of. In my county, we also allow people to vote at any polling place (so you can vote on your lunch hour, etc.), so you wouldn't need to drive to anyone's precinct. You could just visit which ever polling place(s) are convenient. I agree it won't work if the person has already voted. But you're in a race with the voter, and you've got a 50% shot at winning that race. And voter turnout isn't 100%; it's more like 50-60%. If that voter is one of the 40% who don't vote, then you win that race by default. If they're one of the 60% who does, then you've got a 50/50 shot. That adds up to 70% odds of success at stealing their vote. You can even optimize that further by looking at demographic data about voter turnout. Young people, for example, have low turnout and old people have high turnout, and the voter rolls include date of birth.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  You're not in a race with the voter since if you guess wrong and the person you were counting on to not vote, shows up to vote after you (or even before you, it doesn't matter) -- then the game is up and there will be an investigation into the felony you just committed when two identical names show up. You have to be certain that there won't be two votes cast by the same person, so you can see how your probability of not being found out rapidly goes to 0. Even if you rely on the 60% turnout figure, after 3 fraudulent votes you're at a ~6% chance of not being caught.
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    OK, I see what you're saying. Assuming enforcement is good and consistent, I have to agree it's hard to pull it off on a large scale. I'm a little dubious that enforcement actually is good. But if you don't do enforcement properly, then voter ID laws don't prevent fraud either.

sokoloff 6y ago

It seems you only have to get to the polls before the registered voter to carry out an effective attack against that vote. If someone gets to the polls before me and votes under my name, what happens when the real me shows up? They surely can’t go fish “the other me’s” ballot out of the box, because it’s not tied to my name. Where I vote, it would be trivial to do this, as the rolls of voters are openly published and it’s often the case that the poll worker asks you to help find your name and it’s clear which names have been ticked off. Couple that with week-plus early voting and it would be easy to attack an individual vote. Now, I don’t think it’s likely to affect elections because it’s extremely rare for a small number of votes to decide anything but pretending that we have a secure system without ID is fanciful IMO. To be clear, I’m fine with the current setup and appreciate/support the week-plus of early voting.

wtallis 6y ago
> what happens when the real me shows up? What happens is that it becomes immediately obvious that voter fraud has happened, and a criminal investigation begins before the results of the election can be certified. In addition to being basically impossible to scale up to an effective volume, this form of election fraud is also extremely difficult to pull off without getting caught. So it's really more of a (hypothetical) public nuisance leading to election do-overs, than an effective way to subvert the outcome of an election.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Exactly, and each one of the fraudulent votes would consist of a separate felony. So you'd have to wrangle enough people into your conspiracy and convince them all to commit several felonies without having any idea how close the election was going to be. It's not a coincidence that it's an extremely effective way to target "specific" voters in order to depress turnout either.

redis_mlc 6y ago

For those not from the US ... How voter disenfranchisement works is like this. One party (usually the Republicans) looks at a map of areas they're losing in. Then they send a bunch of canvassers over to find out who moved without changing their address, who was sent to jail, technicalities, etc. and request those names be removed from the voter registration list. There's no effort to update the list, it's all removals. And the canvassers don't disclose their actual party or motivation for showing up at your house.

sokoloff 6y ago
It seems entirely "fair play" (and even desirable) to me to exclude from the voting rolls anyone who is not actually eligible to vote per the election rules. While I'd prefer the election commission do this investigative work to keep the lists clean, I'm fine with anyone who goes and does it. (I am unaffiliated with either major party.) Is there a genuine public interest served by not performing this data cleansing and allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots?
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  That's only ever fair if you have instant registration with provisional ballots - many jurisdictions combine these attacks on the vote with long lead times for voter registration so you go to the polls to find out you aren't registered and are left with no recourse. Of course they use dirty lists to begin with that remove thousands of properly registered voters, which I'm sure is accidental and not at all hostile to democracy.[1] I'm so tired of groups actively suppressing vote and people insisting it's all well and good since hypothetically it's preventing some type of fraud that has never been shown to happen in practice. When Stephanie Hofeller published her father's files, all pretense was dropped. Just naked, racist, partisan bullshit.[2] [1] https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/ https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strategists-daughter-makes-files-public-that-republicans-wanted-sea https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strate...

adrianmonk 6y ago

First I want to say voter ID laws are in practice intended to disenfranchise voters. Which makes them unethical. I have also never seen any evidence that it's an actual problem on any significant scale. But, in theory, I think the threat model is there. Here in Texas, you can get a list of everyone who is registered to vote. Most states make these lists available; in Texas, it's available to anyone. So that takes care of one of the steps of identity theft, which this is a form of. In my county, we also allow people to vote at any polling place (so you can vote on your lunch hour, etc.), so you wouldn't need to drive to anyone's precinct. You could just visit which ever polling place(s) are convenient. I agree it won't work if the person has already voted. But you're in a race with the voter, and you've got a 50% shot at winning that race. And voter turnout isn't 100%; it's more like 50-60%. If that voter is one of the 40% who don't vote, then you win that race by default. If they're one of the 60% who does, then you've got a 50/50 shot. That adds up to 70% odds of success at stealing their vote. You can even optimize that further by looking at demographic data about voter turnout. Young people, for example, have low turnout and old people have high turnout, and the voter rolls include date of birth.

mikeyouse 6y ago
You're not in a race with the voter since if you guess wrong and the person you were counting on to not vote, shows up to vote after you (or even before you, it doesn't matter) -- then the game is up and there will be an investigation into the felony you just committed when two identical names show up. You have to be certain that there won't be two votes cast by the same person, so you can see how your probability of not being found out rapidly goes to 0. Even if you rely on the 60% turnout figure, after 3 fraudulent votes you're at a ~6% chance of not being caught.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  OK, I see what you're saying. Assuming enforcement is good and consistent, I have to agree it's hard to pull it off on a large scale. I'm a little dubious that enforcement actually is good. But if you don't do enforcement properly, then voter ID laws don't prevent fraud either.